FWIW, in the HTML5 mobile applications I'm writing, having this working is actually a big deal. Part of what I'm trying to do is overlay HTML elements (jQuery UI elements, or other HTML elements) on top of an inline SVG image.

Having offset() to calculate the correct screen location of the SVG elements is just so handy. I'm not sure how else to do this - you can't just take the CY or CX position of the circle (for example) as the SVG may have transformations (pan / zoom) applied.